Sauerkraut and Jesus

Can vitamin C really be that important? (I have a $2 bottle of it in my cupboard.) Yes, in fact, it is that important!

Consider the lack of it a couple of generations ago, for instance, during the Seven Years War (1756-1763). During those seven years in which His Majesty’s Royal Navy conscripted 185,000 sailors into service, 133,000 lost … not in battle, but lost to poor nutrition; largely to scurvy (Wikipedia) which is chronic vitamin C deficiency. Now, if Wikipedia is right(!), that is 72.3% of British sailors in seven years of wartime died because of undernourishment!

By contrast, about the same time, British Navy Captain James Cook (1769-1771) circumnavigated the globe three times (1769-1779) without losing a single man on his ship to scurvy. “How?” you may ask. (Did he, like I, have a $2 bottle of vitamin C in his cupboard? Hardly.) Captain Cook learned, from trial and error, that a diet that included sauerkraut (pickled cabbage) and wort (the liquid extract of barley generated in the first step of brewing beer) warded off scurvy. It would take science 150 years to directly link scurvy to vitamin C deficiency (1932) but Captain Cook found life in sauerkraut: “the only vegetable food that retained a reasonable amount of ascorbic acid in a pickled state” (Wikipedia). Can you imagine the smell aboard the HM Endeavor?!?

Why mention this? It is a straightforward reason: our diet significantly affects our health, and our health significantly affects our journey. Whether we proceed in ignorance or stubbornness, it is fair to say that what we consume, or fail to consume, can quickly become a life or death affair—physically and spiritually. We could have the best strategies, the best maps, the best ships with the best rigging, but if we have a chronically poor or chronically foolish diet then it may be our ship that loses 72.3% of its crew with dozens of burials at sea before the tour is concluded.

But here is the beauty of the gospel. Unlike Captain Cook who stumbled upon the minimum requirements for staving off death aboard a ship, our Captain Jesus gives us, not the bare minimum requirements for life, but the maximum. He gives us Himself as our true sustenance; our spiritual food. He is the Bread of Life filling not our bellies, but our souls. He is the Water of Life gushing out unto eternal life. He Himself gives us not only minimum requirements for life, but an abundance of eternal life that starts now, that truly fills and overflows our small containers. “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!”